Anyone in high-tech marketing knows how chaotic creating communications materials can be. Product marketing and marcom often write materials as engineering builds the product. Product features change weekly. Product positioning changes daily. Deadlines fall by the wayside. Costs soar. While such work habits may be acceptable during an economic boom, meeting budgets and deadlines becomes critical during an economic downturn.

In today's economic climate, establishing an efficient process for facilitating communication and consensus among the team members responsible for producing marketing materials is essential. Such a process can enable team members to effectively define the content and look of marketing materials before the writer's pen or artist's brush are put to paper. This can help your organization consistently produce high quality, strategically sound marketing materials on time and within your budget.

An efficient process for developing marketing communications consists of identifying the right team members and developing a project plan.

Identify the players
Team members might include engineers, product marketing managers, internal marcom professionals, and external writers and graphics designers. All of these team members must be available to make decisions at each critical project juncture - from kick off through final review.

In one project, for example, Goldberg Communications had gotten to the second draft of a brochure when a new member joined the team, bringing new ideas about the direction of the project and threatening to derail it. We quickly arranged a conference call for all the team members, explained the ramifications of the proposed changes, and averted a crisis.

Ensure A Proper Send Off
Everyone responsible for content of the piece should be involved in a kick-off meeting whose purpose is to gain consensus about the objectives for the project and to ensure that required content is nailed down before any writing begins. Without such clear guidelines, it's easy for a project to veer off course as team members define new messages "on-the-fly."

The purpose of the kick-off meeting is to develop a:

• Project scope
• Content outline
• Creative approach

Scope out the Project
To scope out the project, you need to enumerate all of the assumptions that will underlie the final content. A statement of scope should detail:

• Goals: What is the purpose of the piece? Is it to create awareness? Is it meant to keep a well known product in the public eye? Is it a leave behind after a sales call?
• Audience: Who is the audience? Is it an individual consumer? A company? The trade press? Analysts? All of the above?
• Criteria for success: How will you measure success?

Detail the Content
This step details what you want your audience to know as a result of reading this piece. You want to come up with and gain consensus on:

• The positioning of the product; that is, the unique benefit the product or service provides or the niche it fills.
• The three to five most important benefits of the product along with supporting features and/or other evidence, which might include industry analysts reports, benchmark results or customer testimonials.
• A content outline. What content should the piece include? A company background? Description of how the product works? Customer lists? Lists of services?
• The tone will need to be in keeping with the personality of the company, the product, and the customers. Is the company button-down, businesslike? Irreverent? Folksy? Are the customers hip? Once you've brainstormed adjectives that describe the various audiences for the piece, get examples of other ads, brochures, and so on that seem to speak that language to ensure that everyone is on the same page.

Develop a Creative Approach
Once you're clear on the content and tone, you can determine how you want to approach the layout. Will it be similar to existing marketing materials or unique?

If it is unique, what do you want it to look like? How many pages should it have? Naturally, graphics should complement writing. So discussions about writing tone will pertain here.

For example, a piece designed to create awareness among a high-level audience is likely to be relatively glitzy. A leave-behind meant to provide information to a technical audience late in the sales cycle will probably be a detailed data sheet or a white paper.

By implementing an effective process for mapping out the goals, content, and creative approach, your organization can ensure that marketing communications projects progress smoothly and communicate the right messages. That means your projects are more likely to come in on deadline and within budget.